THE BLOG OF MARK SHIELDS

I've had it for a long time and have used it almost everyday since - not only to Tweet, but to follow events, friends and news. I prefer the format compared to many others, and the apps that I use to read it and interact with it are what makes it such a great service - I use Tweetbot on my iPhone to tweet, only recently having to use the horrendous Twitter webpage thanks to a failure of my 3G and Wifi at work.

I have talked about it a lot of the past few years. I even gave it up cold turkey a few months ago after losing my patience with idiots on it. I culled 100 people I followed and resolved to use it a lot less, and since then I have rarely posting on it but I am still there, reading and consuming. I read Twitter a lot more now I don't Tweet as often.

I was suspended from Twitter once, and it was confusing and annoying, partly because I liked it but also because I had no idea what I'd done to have my access removed. I even drew a troll to my blog because of this due to my complaining, which was fun.

I have also talked about the requirement for companies to use it well and how it can be used for good (and bad). It's a great tool. And how it democratises us excites me a lot.

But I am worried that a company owns it. Unlike email, phone calls or texts, a company actually owns the service, which is why I think an open source version, point-to-point, would be a great replacement. Kind of like a BitTorrent version of Twitter, where it's not stored on their servers but stored on everyone elses computers and stuff. It's an idea I've had for a while.

But yeah, Twitter's the best. Instragram after that, and Facebook? Slowly becoming the worst place online thanks to endless spamming of likes, adverts and my friends vacating it.